2022-04-25 — Uptick

Hola, wonderful folkses. 😊

Green day in the morning trade session. It was a wild one, but in the end, I managed to be up $528. Traded mostly on just one stock that went from $7.77 to $20 just today. I, of course, didn’t catch anywhere near that much of the swing. overall, I got about $0.53 worth of that $12.23. I missed the first huge moves, and I missed later huge moves, but I got a good up, survived a nasty down, and grabbed a couple more little ups before closing the computer and calling it a day.

I did better in some ways today and still not as good in others. I mostly kept calm, except a bit frustrated with Active Trade Pro because it couldn’t get any of my trade numbers right. There were times where it told me I was down by like $25k. It was just… way off today. It was also a bit frustrating because for some reason either I or it couldn’t keep track of the number of shares I had in open positions. When I survived the huge down, I went to sell my rather large position for a really big profit, only to find that the shares were already sold, at a big loss (I had been up $900 ish, and with the gain that last time, I thought I’d be around $1500 in the green, but when it all settled out, I was only up $200 and change. I was glad to have survived a huge swing down, but not so happy with what happened to the shares. The whole software program just seemed confused and like it had no idea where it was or what it was doing.

After that technical issue, I made a few more trades as the stock kept going up, and that’s how I rounded out at the $528 I ended up making on the day before I shut down.

I was proud of myself because I was watching the stock, and I started seeing the pattern I’ve seen so many times, a stock that’s just gone up really fast, then it pulls back, and instead of going down more or going up, or going up, it sort of bounces even for a little while, when I see that, it’s danger zone. More often than not, that’s a recipe for a crash. I invited my mom upstairs to see (and let me process aloud the reason I wasn’t going to be making another purchase, and sure enough, probably a couple minutes later of sideways trading, and the stock price tanked, going down like… a dollar all of the sudden?

I bought the trough, or what I thought was the trough, only to see it drop another $0.30 cents after that (down $300), but it climbed back up, and I sold it for what I bought it for just to get out and be done for the day (it actually kept going up after that, but I was happy enough to get back to break even that… whatever. There will always be missed opportunities. I survived the day’s big downer. I ended in the green. I made back a small fraction of what I lost on Friday, and I’ll be back at it tomorrow.

Twitter.

It’s been interesting as a stock trader to see what’s going on with Twitter and to wonder what to do, if anything. Should I buy and enjoy the seemingly guaranteed money? I could buy tomorrow morning and make a guaranteed $2 a share, which, at a decent number of shares, could be a pretty decent return.

Or the deal could fall through, the stock price plummet, and… yeah. 🙃

I’m probably just going to leave Twitter stock alone. We’ll see, but yeah.

With no new customer cars on the schedule (I have a nephew’s car I need to put shocks on and a neighbor’s car I need to put spark plugs in), I decided to try and get the AC work done on my Z4, so I rediagnosed it (having forgotten what was going on that got me to go buy the new AC kit). And again, I learned that it had a bad compressor, so I spent a good little while evacuating the refrigerant out of my AC system and then fighting tooth and nail with the compressor to get it out of the car. Annoying little stinker.

But it’s out.

Now I just need to figure out how much and what kind of compressor oil to add to the system, and I need to find where the expansion valve goes on this car. I found the dryer, and obviously I know where the compressor is, so I just need to find that expansion valve, and then I can get it all replaced and good to go.

Then I’ll have AC in my little roadster, just in time for the hot weather. Then I just need to fix the paint and the front bumper cover, and I’ll call it good for now.

After a very slow morning work wise, the phone suddenly started ringing off the hook, so I headed out to fix cars, not even getting to the first one until a little after 3 p.m., I think.

First car was a 2007 Lincoln Navigator with a coolant leak. Turned out to have a leaking lower radiator hose (it had completely popped off [it’s the quick-connect design]). That went decently well. The second job was a repeat customer who’s had me installing batteries in several of their service vans. They had me do two the first time, three the second time, and two more today. So I put batteries in those, and then I headed from Rogers (where I did the first two jobs) to west Fayetteville, where I diagnosed a no start for a gentleman in a wheel chair.

It’s sobering and humbling to recall my whining about some aspects of life and then to be around someone who’s got it a lot harder than I do in some really significant ways. What a blessing it is for me to be able to get up when I want to, walk, run, carry stuff, etc.

Anyway, he just had a really drained battery from letting the car sit too long. Gratefully, AutoZone said they’d go ahead and just replace the battery, even though they knew he’d let it sit, and even though it might have been ressurrectable. That simplified things a lot for both me and the gentleman I was doing the job for.

Fourth job was back to the 1998 Ford Expedition I’ve been two twice in the last month before today. The first time it was a bad battery and corroded connections. Then on… Friday? It was corroded connections again. That was really weird because I’d cleaned them off. Then yesterday, he texts and says the vehicle won’t start again! I was… not excited. I wondered if maybe the starter were bad or something this time because I’d gone all out making sure the connections were good and couldn’t corrode.

Sure enough, the connections were great. What I did find was that his column shifter on the transmission was loose and super imprecise, and thinking the vehicle was in park when it wasn’t, he tried to start it. Well, the car thought it wasn’t in park, so it wouldn’t let the engine even crank. After 45 minutes of ruling a bunch of other things out, it turned out to just be bad shift lever bushings. 🙃

I’ve ordered those, and they’ll be in here in a few days.

I’m glad it wasn’t something with the battery again. I was a bit incredulous when he texted me again saying that it wasn’t starting, but I’m glad this was a coincidence and just a completely unrelated issue.

So that was that. I came home, at dinner, and now here I am, 11:05, yawning, and ready to drop into bed.

Good night, my lovelies. 😊

Lift the World

~ stephen